


Orbit

by lizbetann



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Bujold
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-03
Updated: 2007-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:38:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbetann/pseuds/lizbetann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In A Civil Campaign, we find out that Mark and Kareen had gone to the Orb of Unearthly Delights. What did they do there?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orbit

Orbit

The Orb of Unearthly Delights (the old Earth adjective remained in use even though only a tiny fraction of the people who visited it had ever set foot on Good Old Earth) was touted as THE place to get whatever your hedonistic heart desired. Only fully legal and consensual acts, of course -- although sims could be arranged for those who wanted to try more risqué things. But, as the saying went, the Orb had everything that you could want, and if you wanted more, you had to go to Jackson's Whole.

Unfortunately, the constant comparison to Jackson's Whole did Lord Mark Vorkosigan's psyche(s) no good. He'd acquired several things on Jackson's Whole on his last visit: four alternate personalities, a host of sexually-related issues, and the drive to make absolutely, positively sure that he was in control of his life (or they were in control of their life... the terminology was still being hashed out amongst them).

It was that last that had him catching a shuttle from Beta's main city Silica to the satellite that housed the Orb (one three-letter word that encompassed -- hah -- so many sexual images) with his patient Kareen by his side. Well, by his side and looming just short of a foot above him.

Kareen, predictably, was entranced with the satellite. She had been raised on one of the most land-locked planets around, Imperial Barryar, which had until two generations before had been closed off from any interplanetary travel at all. For Kareen, a community that existed around rather than on a planet was a novelty.

So were the bright lights, cheerful music and welcoming people who surrounded them at disembarkment. In short, the Orb was not unlike Kareen herself, Mark thought as he pressed himself to Kareen's side, hiding behind Kareen's own luscious (and uncannily orb-like) breast. He could feel her heart beating against his cheek, neither fast nor slow, just steady and reassuring.

Kareen, who knew more about the inside of his head (their head) than anyone alive, wrapped her arm around his shoulders and kept him moving when his feet wanted to freeze in place. "We'll find our room and settle in for the night," she said. Oblivious, she walked by a tall brunette who craned her neck to watch Kareen admiringly as she went by. "Check in, relax, enjoy ourselves..." Kareen's voice trailed off distractedly as she looked around her at the lights and the people.

Mark hrumphed and huddled deeper into Kareen's forgiving bosom. He was annoyed. No, he was unnerved. Coming to Beta Colony for his education had been a surprisingly easy choice to make. He knew that he had a home and family on Barrayar, two things he'd never had before in his life. Somehow, it was easier to contemplate the concept with three weeks' travel and several jumps between them. Although God and the Countess only knew where Miles was at this moment. He could be around the corner... Mark firmly repressed the thought. He did not need his progenitor-brother on his mind (their mind) right now.

So while the decision to come to Beta was easy, the coming itself was hard. Halfway to the ship, he decided that he was quite happy to stay inside Vorkosigan house for the next hundred years or so, like a turtle with an oversized shell. If he gained enough weight, maybe it could be a shell in truth, and he was captivated by the image of a house-sized Mark, arms and legs poking through windows and doors and his head through a chimney.

But he couldn't turn tail and run, no matter how much he wanted to. Because he'd had Kareen beside him; Kareen, who had never so much as been through a jump point in her life, who was clinging to him as the galactic traveler. He couldn't let her down and so, clinging to her clinging to him, they limped in an awkward three-legged race to Beta. Once there, they settled into their lives as students, under the bemused but benevolent aegis of Dr. Elizabeth Naismith, Miles' (my/our) grandmother.

People looked at him and Kareen ducking through the crowds, and he shrank impossibly closer, willing himself to disappear. He was nervous. Okay, fine, he was terrified.

He'd gone to therapy, he'd worked hard at school, and he had spent time with Kareen. Of the three, the one he wanted the most -- Kareen -- scared him the most.

At school he was intelligent, competent, and respected as such. At therapy, he listened to a knowledgeable woman help him through his various and sundry neuroses. Both of those were structured and both were fundamentally impersonal -- or fundamentally selfish, he never decided which.

But Kareen... Kareen made him feel open. Exposed. As though his skin had been stripped off and every nerve exposed (which, for Mark, was not as metaphorical an experience as it sounded). He wanted to rest against Kareen's incredible warmth, to curl into her and let her surround him. But at the same time he felt too exposed, too raw. Too vulnerable.

He longed for her presence, but when she was there, he couldn't stand to have her close.

It got better, Mark admitted glumly to himself as Kareen checked them into their room at the resort. The months they had spent together on Beta had eased his panicky come here/leave me alone tendencies. He'd worried over her when she plunged into new things -- particularly the night she had eschewed Barrayan maidenly virtue for Betan womanly knowledge. He'd waited up, anxiously, for her to return from her sexual initiation (intelligent girl, she had hired a Betan hermaphrodite licensed practitioner to ease her into the world of the semi-opposite sex), expecting her to be radically changed. He feared that that would be hurt, damaged, scarred. And in a way, almost equally feared that she would be transformed, that physical passion would make her better than him/them. Howl really liked to chew on that one, while Killer sat quietly and thought about how he would rip the heart out of any man Kareen professed to love.

Instead, when she returned, she was... Kareen. Happy and pleased, but still Kareen.

She'd had a few lovers, boys from her school. Mark had chaffed, wondering if she was going to find someone she liked better than him (and what Killer would do), and even though his therapist had strenuously recommended against it, he finally gave in to the fear that Kareen would leave him and instead scrunched his eyes shut, lowered his head, and barreled into his fear of sex.

That fear turned out to be... nothing. There was nothing in bed with Kareen that was anything like the horrible temper tantrum that David Galen had subjected him to, or the sophisticated tortures that Baron Ryoval had practiced. Kareen was... herself, too complete within her own skin to be confused with anyone else. Unfortunately, that did not mean that they enjoyed each other when they made love. The warmth was nice, the closeness, but there was something ineffable missing. Like passion. Like desire. Like orgasms.

Mark hadn't considered that when he finally plunged into an adult sexuality, it would be fundamentally as boring as warm milk. There was a queer comfort in having something in his life be bland and boring, rather that dramatic, weird and traumatic, but why did it have to be his sex life?

Kareen never complained. She seemed to be perfectly happy cuddling him, kissing him, and if the grand finale was a little less than grand, she didn't seem to mind.

But Mark did. Hence, talking it over with his therapist and this trip to the Orb. Thoughtfully, the therapist had even arranged a discount, pleasing Mark's financial wizard heart. Even though she had been against his beginning a physical relationship with Kareen, she was willing to help in any way she could now that it was in progress (and had not led to a complete and total mental breakdown for Mark).

But in this place of free and easy sexuality, he was beginning to feel his brain divide itself up. Gorge was bored, Grunt was thrilled, Howl was scared, and Killer... Killer kept three eyes open (they were metaphorical, he could have as many metaphorical eyes as he wanted) to make sure that nothing harmed 1) Kareen, and 2) Lord Mark and the rest of the Black Gang. The basis of the Orb of Unearthly Delights was delight in the body. Mark's body had for his whole life been a prison and a mask.

When they reached their luxurious room, Mark flopped backwards onto the bed with a deep sigh, grateful to be away from so many eyes, while Kareen prowled the room, examining furnishings, investigating closets and secret doors. He lay comfortably and watched her as she passed in and out of sight over his full belly, like a personal sun rising and setting and rising on his horizon.

If they could just stay like this forever, he would be satisfied. Near, comfortably sharing the same space. No scary decisions to make, no doubt, no fear. Nothing to risk... and nothing to gain. Damn his brain, insisting on reminding him that stagnation was boring.

Kareen's bright blonde head seemed to have gone into an eclipse; it no longer rounded his rotundness. Finally, not hearing anything from her, he heaved himself upright on the bed and saw her standing before a panel that had slid obediently open at the touch of her hand on a control. Her mouth had dropped open at the sight of what was stored behind the door.

He slipped off the bed, Killer leading by a nose. The elegantly appointed cabinet had an array of toys; feathers, things with swells and bumps in interesting places, artificial genitalia that were faithful to their originators in only the desirable ways.

But the majority of this particular cabinet was taken up with... weapons. Weapons obviously designed and used for the purpose of pleasure, but weapons nonetheless. Everything from a low-tech whip with velvet straps to a stunner which, Mark assumed with a queasy stomach, would deliver a low enough voltage to freeze a person's muscles without causing pain -- and without killing sensation.

Kareen's eyes widened in complete confusion, and then froze open as she realized what these were and what they might be used for. Her hand twitched to hit the release again, to send the door sliding shut on the display of erotic pain. But Mark's reflexes were good enough to catch her wrist before she could do it, his gaze fixated on the implements.

Kareen's hand twitched once again in his grasp, and then subsided. She looked over at him, and opened her mouth to say something. It took her three times before she managed to say, "You want to -- play with these?"

Narrow-eyed with concentration, Mark stepped up to the wall of weapons. He couldn't reach many, but he brushed the tips of the whip with his fingers, admired mechanical and electronic bonds. There was an itch in his palms, as though he could feel synth-leather and textured steel already in his hands.

Kareen reached past him and lifted down a pair of restraints. These were old-fashioned, almost Barryan in their lack of technology. Just simple suede-like fabric-lined cuffs that locked with a simple key. She turned them over in her hands, her long fingers vivid against the rich purple color of the fabric. Grunt eagerly sat up and took notice as Kareen unconsciously caressed the fabric, enjoying the texture on her fingertips. Down boy, Mark thought.

Kareen, still holding the cuffs, turned to face him directly for the first time since she had opened the panel. Maybe the first time since they had arrived at the Orb itself. She held out the cuffs to him. "Do you want to put these on me?" she asked, her voice deeply unsure.

Mark reached out his hand and picked up the bonds. He imagined them against Kareen's wrists. Tied down, helpless. He could do anything to her, pull down the whip or the stunner, beat her until bright blood rushed from her skin.

Nauseated, Mark flung the cuffs at the wall, knocking askew a long, flexible rod. It several moments to realize that the sounds he was hearing was coming out of his mouth, as Kareen immediately went to his side and wrapped her arms around him, sinking to the floor with him and rocking him in her arms.

Eventually he regained the concept of language, realized he was chanting, "No, no, no, no," monotonously. Kareen's bright hair was spread across his face and she was shushing him like a mother with a fretful child. Mark finally managed to catch a few shuddering breaths, and say, "I can't... I wouldn't... I can't hurt you!"

 

Kareen's head turned, and she looked back at the wall. "I know some people... enjoy... playing with these."

Mark didn't know if she was wondering or trying to encourage him, but he shook his head fiercely. "I don't want to hurt you." I'm too good at it, I can hurt you without those, I can kill you, but if you die I don't have a sun, I don't have light.

Kareen finally disentangled herself from his grasp, got to her feet and went to close the panel. Mark watched it broodingly as it closed, fascinated still by the elegant lines of the toys.

They fell into bed and asleep, too exhausted to make love. But sometime in the night Mark woke up and crept over to the panel again, sliding it open. He couldn't get them out of his mind.

Howl, predictably, didn't want to use them on Kareen. Howl wanted them used on him/them, the Conglomerate of Lord Mark Pierre Vorkosigan, Limited Partnership. He was trying to convince Grunt to go along with this. Killer, surprisingly, seemed somnolent in the back, as quiet as he had been before any of them had known his name. Gorge abstained from having an opinion, as long as he got breakfast at some point.

What did Lord Mark want?

Mark wanted to be in control. Mark wanted his own life and his own place.

And way back deep down, Mark wanted Kareen to tie him up.

Howl jumped up and down with glee, and Mark's peaking interest caught Grunt's attention as well. Immediately, Mark tried to shush the two of them. He didn't want it, Howl wanted it.

That wasn't quite true. Howl wanted it because he was Howl. His purpose was pain, physical or emotional, and without it he didn't have purpose.

Mark wanted it because... he didn't know why. But he did.

Crossing the hotel room to Kareen's side took forever. Three steps forward, four back, two forward, one back, then a rush of five steps with a long pause for indecision. What would she say? What would she think? Would she be disgusted? Appalled?

Howl nudged him and asked what would happen if she liked it, and could they do it very often in that case, please. Mark shushed him and tried to think, while Grunt just waited for something to happen.

"Mark, I can hear you thinking from here," said Kareen calmly. She sat up and flung the covers off of her. She fixed him with a Kareen-look, and waited.

"I've been thinking about..." Awkwardly, Mark gestured at the open panel, at the instruments of torture? pleasure? both? behind it.

Kareen leaned her chin on her hand and regarded him steadily. "But you don't want to do it to me, right?"

Mark squirmed. "Right. I want you to... do it to me."

Kareen climbed out of bed. "I don't know if I can hurt you, either," she said as she crossed the room and picked up the cuffs they had been considering before.

Slowly, as though moving underwater, Mark held out his wrists, and Kareen clamped the restraints around them. There were several hooks embedded in the walls, but given Mark's height Kareen finally chose one in the floor and locked the chains to that. Mark's heart was pounding, but he couldn't tell whether with agitation or lust. Possibly both. He didn't know, but the adrenaline surging in his body made him feel wide-awake-alive.

Kareen, with her blonde curls tangled around her face from sleep and the silky negligee she had purchased for this trip hanging twisted and neglected on her body, didn't look dangerous or mysterious. She looked cuddly. But the very fact of Mark's helplessness in the face of her freedom made him swing dizzily between fear and excitement.

"Kareen," he said, his voice high and squeaky.

Kareen turned to him from where she was standing with her hands on her hips, examining the open cabinet again with a faintly harried air. "Yes, Mark?"

Mark was panting. "I want you to promise me something."

Kareen went to him, and went down on her knees to touch his face. I could kill her like this. I killed Baron Ryoval with my hands behind my back. Chained to the ground, no problem. "Anything, Mark. I swear."

Her sweet earnestness in the face of his inability to stop thinking about his own dangerous abilities was obscene. Mark shook his head hard to try to get the thoughts out of his head. "I want you to promise me that you won't stop. Not even if I ask you. Not even if I beg you."

Her hands jerked towards the chains. "I can't promise that, Mark!" she said, panicky. "I can't... I don't know how..." On her face was an expression that Mark recognized very well, a look of sexual uncertainty and inadequacy. Asking Kareen to be cruel would hurt her, cut into her softness and leave scars.

Mark tried to breath, tried to think. "You don't have to hurt me." Howl objected, but Mark went doggedly on. "I just... don't want to always have to control them all." The words spilled faster from him, like a prisoner under fast-penta. "I have to keep them down, keep them civilized, to not get thrown in a loony bin. To keep control of my world. But I don't want to have to all the time. But I want to just... be."

Kareen tilted her head, and stared at him hard, a furrow between her brows, trying to understand. That stare made Mark feel like his skull was being peeled like an orange, the segments separated out. Finally her eyes softened. "I want..." she said, her voice trailing off dreamily. "I want to make you happy. Without having to worry about making you happy."

"I want to make you happy too," Mark said hastily, feeling like he'd been outdone.

Kareen laughed and shook her head. "Stop thinking, Mark. You kept the brain, and handed off all your emotions to the Black Gang. Take them back, at least for a little while." She put her hands down on top of where his were chained to a loop on the floor, leaned down, and kissed him.

"Okay," Mark whispered when he could. Kareen just laughed again and kept touching him, kissing him, doing exactly what she wanted to him. Not what she thought she should do, or what she thought he wanted her to do. But what she wanted.

Apparently, what she wanted was to kill him with tenderness. She swarmed over his body, using the advantage of her longer limbs to encompass as much of him as she could in her embrace, to kiss every bit of him she could find. It wasn't until he felt her free, unfettered touch that Mark realized how careful she'd been with him, as much as he had been with her. Wanting so hard to make it right for the other, they'd ignored their own desires, which had left both of them flat.

Now he was drowning in the Sea of Kareen, and loved it. He lolled in his restraints, floating. "I like this," she whispered in his ear, and then kissed it. "I like being able to take care of you for once. I like knowing you'll let me."

"Hmmmmmmm," Mark hummed back happily, not wanting to distract himself enough to form words. Kareen just laughed in his ear and continued.

Later, much later, after they'd stumbled into bed, Kareen poked Mark as they were drifting off to sleep. "Mhumpf?" he asked, comfortably buried in her breasts.

"We're... we don't have to do that every time, right?"

Mark considered. Then he looked up at her with a lascivious leer. "Not every time." And then he pounced on her.

Grunt was very, very happy that night.

THE END


End file.
